Facebook turns 12 years old and celebrates Friends Day, saying that an average pair of users on the social network now has only 3.57 degrees of separation between them.
Friends Day Video
As the name suggests, the event is to commemorate the importance of friendship. To leave a lasting memory, Facebook is greeting users with a personalized Friends Day video that consists of memories such as a previous birthday and other notable moments and pictures of them and their friends, ending it on a strong note with a Happy Friends Day greeting from the company itself.
"When people connect, powerful things happen and lives are changed. We see this on Facebook every day, whether it's an exchange with an old friend that brings a smile to your face or a new connection that changes your life path, or even the world," Facebook says.
Users can watch a preview of what the website automatically put together, and if they see something they don't like, they can edit and choose which photos to use and arrange their positions before sharing it to their friends.
Degrees Of Separation
Facebook mentioned that the community on the social network has doubled in size over the past five years and that the degrees of separation between two users have dwindled down from 3.74 in 2011 to 3.57 degrees. The company suggests that this is proof of how well-connected people all over the world have become – for the 1.5 billion active users on the website at least.
"Now, with twice as many people using the site, we've grown more interconnected, thus shortening the distance between any two people in the world," the research team of Facebook says on a blog post that also shows a user's own degrees of separation.
Free Stickers
To keep the good times going, Facebook also rolled out two sticker packs called Best Friends and Friendship free of charge. They can now be downloaded through the Messenger app or the Sticker Store, giving users a fun way to show the world how much their friends mean to them.
More Friendship Celebrations
Facebook also hosted an event at its Menlo Park headquarters, where they invited 18 members of the social network's community to tell stories of their friendships.
The company highlighted one of them called GirlCrew, a Facebook group that started out in Dublin and grew to 22,000 members in over 40 cities across the world. The group is focused on helping women find and make friends, holding events and other similar occasions in its area.
Facebook has come so far, and it's been a big part of many people's lives for about a decade now. It looked pretty great back then, and it still looks pretty good right now. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has even more plans in store to improve the social network, the company itself and the experience of users everywhere.
With Friends Day, Facebook users have yet another happy way to celebrate with their friends, providing a gentle reminder about the importance of friendship.
